a while since Charlie washed that truck of his.
Wonder how long it’ll be before Amos’s bumper falls off.
There wasn’t much that slipped by the locals. Where other locals were concerned, anyway. Visitors were treated politely, especially when they came to vacation on the lake in the summer and for the festivals that fed the town’s coffers. Their spending helped pay for everything from the newly paved parking lot at the community center to sports equipment for the elementary school. But only the residents warranted true interest in conversations at the diner or around the checkerboard at the general store. Especially if whatever that person was up to proved more interesting than what seemed to be going on anywhere else.
That was why Jenny wasn’t surprised when, by six o’clock that evening, she’d had no fewer than four visitors, including Joe who’d stopped by with a crowbar when he’d heard that she hadn’t wanted to pay ten dollars for one at the general store. He’d helped her pry off the particularly stubborn board covering the living room window and told her he’d be back tomorrow with a ladder and help her take the boards off the windows upstairs.
Carrie Higgins, who’d been Carrie Rogers when she’d hung out with Jenny’s older sister and Dora’s daughter, Kelsey, at the old grist mill behind the house, had stopped by to see for herself that Jenny was actually back and living in her grandma’s old place. Jenny hadn’t invited her in. She hadn’t invited anyone in because she hadn’t wanted to lie and say her furniture hadn’t been delivered yet, which was the only way she could think to explain why her bed was a pile of blankets and a comforter in a corner of the kitchen.
Carrie hadn’t seemed to mind the lack of an invitation. She’d just wanted to say hi and bring her a welcome-back Jell-O salad, the kind with pistachio pudding in it. So they’d stood outside under the old maple tree, Jenny holding the plastic bowl and Carrie holding her ten-month-old on her hip while her four-and six-year-olds tormented a caterpillar and promised each other they’d get together soon.
Gap-toothed Smiley Jefferson, who had the postal route and was the mayor’s brother-in-law, stopped to see if she would be putting up a mailbox, since the one out by the road had fallen to wood rot years ago, or if she’d be using a box at the post office.
Sally McNeff, who now ran her aging mother’s bookstore, stopped by on her way home from work to welcome Jenny home and tell her she was so sorry she’d been mugged.
Jenny had been alone for all of fifteen minutes and was inside washing the multi-paned front window when another vehicle pulled onto the rutted driveway.
Across the narrow ribbon of road that led into town, the land rose in a long and gentle hill. Only the trees at the top were illuminated by sunlight. In another hour it would be dusk. But just then the air glowed golden. In that gentle light she watched a gray bull-nosed truck rumble toward the house. She had already cleaned the outside of the glass, and light spilled across the dusty hardwood floor, taking some of the dreariness from the room. Or maybe simply illuminating it. In the brighter light, she could more easily see how badly the ivy-print wallpaper was pealing.
The truck pulled to a stop behind her sporty black sedan. Finishing the pane she was washing, careful of the crack in it so she wouldn’t wind up with a hole where the foot-wide pane had been, she tried to make out who was driving it. With the wide maple trees shading the weedy and overgrown lawn, all she could see was the pattern of light and shadow on the windshield.
Curiosity got the better of her. Leaving her task, she absently tugged her short white T-shirt over the waistband of her denim capris and moved to the open front door as the truck came to a stop. The screen door screeched in protest when she pushed it open.
Reminding herself to go through the collection of odds and ends on the back porch to see if a can of oil lurked in their midst, she sidestepped the loose board on the porch and came to a halt at the top step.
Greg climbed from behind the wheel. Before she could even begin to imagine why he was there, the slam of his door sent birds squawking as they scattered from the trees.
He had her yellow towel with him. Seeing her framed by the posts on the porch, he headed toward her, his stride relaxed and unhurried. Without the lab coat covering his golf shirt and khakis, she could see that the sling completely encased his arm, holding it nearly as close to his body as he’d held it himself last night.
She needed to forget last night. Certain parts of it, anyway.
“I hear Charlie Moorehouse loaned you his truck,” she called, thinking the comment as good a way as any to keep things neighborly.
She watched him glance toward Charlie’s newest acquisition. The fact that the old guy had lent the doctor his pride and joy attested to how grateful he had been to Greg for getting him through his last bout of gout.
“He’s saved me a lot of hassle,” he admitted, sounding grateful himself. She’d also heard that truck was an automatic. With the use of only one arm, he couldn’t have driven anything else. “He dropped it off for me after he and his son towed my SUV into St. Johnsbury.”
“How long before you get it back?”
“Not sure,” he replied, and stopped at the foot of the steps. He hadn’t come to exchange small talk. He wanted something. She could tell from the way his deceptively casual glance slid over her frame, his mouth forming an upside down U in the moments before he held out her neatly folded towel.
He also didn’t appear totally convinced that he should be there.
“Do you have a few minutes?” he asked as she took what he offered.
“Sure.” Despite a quick sense of unease, she gave a shrug. “I was just cleaning.”
Behind her, the window sparkled. Above, cobwebs laced the corners of the porch roof.
“That ought to keep you busy for a while.”
“Until spring, I would imagine.”
The U gave way to a faint smile. “Then, I won’t keep you long. Bess is on me to hire you,” he admitted, getting straight to the point. “She said she’s sure you’ll have no trouble picking up medical terminology and our procedures. Since you appear to have considerable office experience, I wondered if you wanted to tell me why I shouldn’t offer you the job.”
The question threw her. So did the intent way he watched her as she crossed her arms over the folded yellow terry cloth and waited for her to either recover from his blunt query or invite him in and answer it.
“Because I already have one?”
Something in his eyes seemed to soften. She wasn’t sure what it was. It hinted at patience, yet looked more like weariness. The draining kind of weariness that sucked the spirit from deep inside a man.
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
Unfortunately, she did. She also knew she had several very good reasons to ignore the quick tug of empathy she felt for what she saw. For starters, if he was tired, it was probably because he hadn’t slept well with his arm throbbing or aching or whatever it was probably still doing. More important, he seemed far more perplexed by her than interested in her sympathy.
Perplexed didn’t begin to describe what Greg felt when it came to the quietly pretty woman warily eyeing him from three steps away. The more he learned about her, the more bits and pieces of her
